Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will provide some figures and interrogate them correctly. I acknowledge the report to which Deputy Tóibín refers. Of the 87,000 people who have emigrated from Ireland in the year up to April 2012, less than half of them, 40,600 people, were not Irish. Many of them were non-Irish people who came to Ireland over the previous decade or so for work and are now returning home. The CSO figures show 53,000 people came to Ireland last year and 20,600 were Irish nationals returning home. Extrapolating from the figures, the years from 1992 to 2012 show a certain number of Irish people choosing to emigrate for career or personal reasons. I beg indulgence of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

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